Want the Truth? Dig Deep.

I’ve recently been thinking about how difficult it can be to uncover the truth. Let me explain...

I’m writing a script for a YouTube video on electric cars. Specifically, “Are Electric Cars ACTUALLY Better for the Environment?” The totally uninformed answer is “uh, YA, we’re not burning fossil fuels!” The slightly-more-informed, yet still-not-complete answer is “well, no, because the electricity has to be generated somehow, and that’ll probably be with coal donchaknow?” 

The answer to this question (if we ever arrive at at truly definitive one) is not easy to come by because there are so many articles  and studies and professors and programs saying totally different things. Look at the results we get when we google search this question in two different ways:

Only one of the top 4 results articles is the same and the other three seem at least partially framed for the searcher. Can we trust those? And can we necessarily trust the Washington Examiner article just because it appeared in both?

HOW TO FIND THE TRUTH: You have to dig, and you’ll start by opening many (if not all) of these articles. If they cite no specific research or statistics (which some actually do), you can probably throw it out. If they cite research, look up the paper. Read the “methods” section. Contact the authors if you’re still confused. This is how you start obtaining what might be the closest thing to objective “truth” we’ll find. Sometimes this can be simple, and just one or two sites will explain away the misconceptions. But sometimes it goes deeper, deeper to the point where I start wondering how two legitimate, respectable parties have arrived at totally antithetical positions through supposedly similar methodology. 

This definitely takes a lot of time, trust me. But there are so so many instances of people fitting one study or one anecdote to a specific narrative that it can be practically irresponsible to trust just the first source you see for modern issues (This holds especially for politicized issues like Green energy…again, see that Chicago Tribune article from before). 

[From all the research I’ve done, I’ve reached my own conclusions about this specific question—if you want to read it, scroll to the bottom of this post.]

This also makes me think about politics. I consider myself politically literate even though there is so much I don’t know and can never hope to know. In fact, I (like many others) am politically literate in the same way tenth graders can read—I can digest information, but I’m not going to be able to make analyses and draw conclusions the way someone who’s studied this their whole life could. Now there are some things in which I fundamentally believe because I think they are just: people should have equal rights, people shouldn’t have to go hungry, etc. And then there are things in which I believe not because I know, but only because I take the word of people who know more than me: how our involvement in the Middle East will affect our/their future, whether trickle down economics works or not, etc. 

I’ve increasingly been thinking that it’s impossible to definitively know the answers to that second group of questions. There are literally hundreds of factors simultaneously influencing these situations, and to claim there is just one cause or effect is totally narrow-minded. And then there are people who will say what they believe, even when that belief is unjustified or unsubstantiated, simply because it feels right or makes sense. (Full disclosure, I, and probably all of you, have done this before and will continue to.)

You have to really go deep when you want to know if something is genuinely true. It’s really fun to do that, and so rewarding when you arrive at something true and concrete! But it’s possible that not everything has a concrete answer. So what should we do when we encounter those problems? Well…I’m not sure. I don’t think the answer is giving up, but I sure don’t know what it is. 

~~~My own conclusions about electric vehicles and their “cleanliness”~~~

The general consensus seems to be that if the electricity needed to charge an EV (electric vehicle) is produced with clean technology (little-to-0 C02 emissions) like solar, wind, or nuclear, then the EV is better. But if it’s produced with electricity generated by the burning of coal, then it’s probably dirtier. 

My own research has lead me to believe that even in the states with the highest percentages of electricity generation spurred by coal-burning, EVs are no dirtier than gasoline-powered cars, and may even be cleaner. If you’re interested in how I reached that conclusion, contact me!

P.S. My research is still in progress, so my opinion may shift. 

EDIT: Here are my fully-researched findings: http://imgur.com/qCN7W6w

Columbus Day

So every time Columbus Day comes around, I've noticed two distinct reactions. First, the "yay, no school/work!" crowd who couldn't care less what Columbus did to earn them their day off. The second crowd—which seems to be increasing by the day—says something like "yes, perfect, let's HONOR a man who raped and killed thousands of natives and committed a bunch of other atrocities." Now I'm not going to cite stats or accounts of what Columbus did, because they're easily verifiable. I agree with this crowd that Columbus was not at all innocent or a saint. But I do want to make a counterargument for all the people who seem immovably wedged within that viewpoint.

It's really easy to say Columbus was an awful man because of the utter destruction he wrought on the native people of the Americas. But Columbus' coming was a major reason Europeans came to America—if Columbus didn't come here, we wouldn't exist at all, or our lives would be drastically different. We might be living in another country or technological age surely behind our current.

So think about it this way: if you could sacrifice your life to change time so that those atrocities never happened...would you? I wouldn't. Maybe that sounds selfish, but I've become accustomed to living and my family and society. Changing history back would literally disrupt everything, including our very existence.

It seems natural to celebrate a person who helped create an entire culture, but does that hold even if another culture was virtually destroyed in the process? Instead of unilaterally demonizing or praising our Italian friend, we should recognize him for the good things he did for our culture while being cognizant of the legitimately horrible things he did for another.